


Us against the world.

by Hashilavalamp



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Historical, OC, gilbert being fucking weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26036914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hashilavalamp/pseuds/Hashilavalamp
Summary: At the lowest point, everyone needs some company.Sensing the disastrous turn at the Battle of Kunersdorf, Brandenburg rushes to find Prussia.
Relationships: Brandenburg & Prussia (Hetalia)
Kudos: 16





	Us against the world.

**Author's Note:**

> A little something I wrote and decided to post because we need more Brandenburg out there! :3

“What a terrible day this was.”

Together Brandenburg and Prussia sat in the grass, staring up to the skies. Tension yet lingered in the air like a foreboding note humming in their ear drums, but their nerves were too frayed to muster more than a half-hearted reaction, muscles too sore to tense. They had already spent all they had.

Brandenburg hadn’t even been there for the worst of it but she could feel it, had felt the panic grip her heart as her hands did the reins, willing her horse to go faster. She knew there wouldn’t be anything she could do, but she couldn’t rest, couldn’t wait, she needed to be there. She hated this physical sensation of fear, the way it made her light-headed and forced her forward, emptied her until there was nothing but dumb instinct. It had chased her the whole way, taunting her with visions of carnage she knew to be true, driving her ever faster as though she would come apart at the seams. When she’d found him, she had collapsed next to him. 

She never even saw the battlefield.

“His majesty is inconsolable. He sent me away for now” Prussia eventually said, sounding resigned. “Maybe we’ll find him dead soon.” 

Brandenburg couldn’t even care too much. She brushed back strands of hair sticking to her forehead with sweat. August couldn’t give her a cold night to cool off the physical exertion, its air sickly sweet and sweltering. She’d felt the thunder in her bones even from the distance.

They were quiet for a while. Prussia looked like shit, that’s how she’d known that this might be the end of it. The grime of battle still stuck to him, a trail of dried blood running down the side of his head. The sharp edge of his gaze seemed dulled, his eyes gleaming with fever. And he was so quiet, so terrifyingly quiet. Prussia wasn’t the kind of person you always wanted to worry about, but sometimes you did. Sometimes you did, and it was the scariest thing in the world to her. She couldn’t help but resent him for it. Brandenburg slipped off one of her gloves, carefully reaching over to him with her hand still trembling from the exhaustion. Her fingertips touched his cheek feather-light, tracing over the skin. 

Like one of his beloved dogs he leaned into the touch, tilting his head and closing his eyes.

“Johanna?” he asked her.

“Yes?”

“Do you trust me?”

Brandenburg swallowed around glass shards. “I trust you with many things.”

“What kind of things?”

Oh, what things. She trusted him with so many things, she trusted him to hurt her. “I trust you to hold out as long as you can.”

“…I was afraid you thought worse of me” he replied, sounding relieved.

Brandenburg shifted with discomfort, her hands both back in her lap, clutching her glove.

“Johanna, the world is against us” Prussia soon said into their silence, inhaling deep as if it would restore life to him. He still wouldn’t look at her.

“Didn’t you make it that way?” Brandenburg accused, her limbs becoming heavy and eyes stinging. “Biting at every hand that feeds you, insulting our allies, insisting— insisting always to gamble with your life, always asking too much! Have you ever thought of me? Have you ever considered the consequences for me when you do these things? Now the enemy is coming for my heart and you ask for my trust! It’s _my_ heart, Gilbert!”

And finally Prussia turned, meeting her gaze with something that she hoped was guilt. “I know, I know it is your heart. But I was never asking only for myself.”

“Of _course_ you weren’t. That’s why you always listen to my advice.”

“I—“

“Just hold the defense. Hold it as long as you can, that is all I ask of you.”

Bitter taste flooded her mouth, her facial muscles straining to contain the surge of rage within her. She was so drained, she was already all empty, and yet somehow he still drew these emotions from her. She wanted to cry, but not here. Not now.

“There is more that can be done” Prussia insisted, his voice cracking. “I refuse to let this be the end.”

First he perked up suddenly, looking around as if to see if anybody was watching them but their spot was secluded enough to give them privacy. He changed his position then, struggling against the pain of his injuries to come to rest on his knees and motioning for her to do the same. And she hated that she did it, glaring at him all the way.

“What is this?”

“Let us pray” he whispered, uncharacteristically anxious in tone.

“What for? Don’t you trust your own abilities?” Brandenburg bit back. The last century had soured religion to her, and if God had cared He would have shown Himself by now. Prussia had done enough, he didn’t have to do this to her too.

…But something about Prussia compelled her to fold her hands together for prayer, even if only to humor him.

“I won’t ask for that much” Prussia answered, his eyes wide and hands clasped tightly together. Something seemed to have returned to him that the battle had taken, something desperate and foolish. It was a vulnerability that he was exposing to her perhaps unwittingly, tender and shaking. Something that no enlightenment could free him of. “I never try to ask much. And maybe if we ask together…“

“What will we be asking for?”

“Time. We only need time for now.”

“Are you sure?”

Prussia looked at her, his face set in determination bordering on the fanatic, filling her with a drunken sense of certainty in spite of her bitterness towards him. How did he do it? How could he speak so confidently of something he couldn’t know? Because really he was as desperate and scared as she was, bloody and broken and only trying to claw his way out of hell. “That’s all we’ll need. That’s all. We will fight for this victory.”

“How can you claim that? After all you’ve done?”

Prussia faltered for only a moment, the red of his eyes burning in hers even in this bleak light. “Because I’ve decided it so. Do I have any other choice now than to believe in it for us both? There is only victory in the fate I’ve chosen. I always trusted England to abandon us, for us to be in this position. And I trust you to resent me. But please, trust me to win this.” 

Maybe she should worry. Maybe she should tell him now that this will never work, that she’ll tell the king he hangs onto superstition, that she’ll humiliate him in front of Europe.

She hated it, she hated him, she hated him so much, and she clung to this tiny hope with all that she had.

Brandenburg closed her eyes and decided to pray for him.


End file.
